In a move aimed at boosting its presence in the Boston
market, RCN Corp. Monday acquired a
high-capacity fiber link from NEES Communications, Inc. (NEESCom), a
subsidiary of New England Electric System.

The acquisition will support the link between two of
RCN's Boston-area facilities, activating the high-speed fiber backbone
running between the company's operations base in Boston and the
Marlborough, Mass., site of RCN's UltraNet unit.

"This new fiber link will further solidify the connection between these two
RCN facilities and build additional diversity and redundancy into a very
robust fiber network," said Michael Adams, president of
RCN's Technology and Network Development Group.

"It also will complement the regional backbone we
have already put in place in this growing market for RCN voice, video and
data services."

The company said today's agreement will enable it to expand diversity into
a long-haul fiber link acquired from Qwest Communications in 1998 and
transfer existing traffic now carried on leased private line connections to
its own fiber.

RCN will also be able to provision future traffic directly onto its own
diverse fiber backbone. The acquisition is part of RCN's
strategy of being the low-cost operator in all of the markets it serves.

"Through the combination of our own construction efforts and these recent
acquisitions, we have been extremely successful in deploying a
high-capacity broadband network capable of providing the full suite of
services to residential customers," Adams said.

"We have also been able to build enough diversity and
redundancy into the system to ensure the highest levels of service while
using just a fraction of our overall
capacity."